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Pharrell: New album feels different

Pharrell Williams has hinted that he wasn't enamoured with his last album.

The Happy star - who released his new record G I R L this month - unveiled his debut solo offering In The Mind in 2006 but revealed to GQ that he feels better about the music he is making now.

Asked if his new record felt different, he said: "Way different.

"In My Mind was just purpose-oriented toward, like, competing and being like my peers - the Jays and the Puffs of the world, who make great music. But their purposes and their intentions are just completely different than what I have discovered in myself that I wanted to achieve in this one.

"So it makes it easier to sing about, because I don't gotta sing about myself. Jay's good at that. He's great at it. I began to sound so self-serving and so self-satisfied, whereas he can do it and make you feel inspirational about who he is and what his intention is."

Asked if he was unhappy back then, the singer-songwriter confessed: "Of course."

Pharrell, 40, explained: "Because I felt like I had amassed this big body of work, most - not all - but most of which was just about self-aggrandisement, and I wasn't proud of it.

"So I couldn't be proud of the money that I had; I couldn't be proud of all the stuff that I had. I was thankful, but what did it mean? What did I do? And at this point, where I came from, I'm just throwing it in that kid's face, instead of saying, 'Look at all the fish I have, and look how much we're going to eat.' It should've been - at least a part of it - teaching them how to fish.

"That's why you gotta give it to Jay, because he's been talking to - you know, he's been telling everybody: 'If I did it, you could do it, too.' So I did a little bit of that, but I was so occupied with, like, the competitive spirit - and not in the right way."